“Yes,” Hector growled. “Yes, move with me, princess. Show me everything you have in you. Give it to me; I need it. I need you.”
Clio’s arms were around his neck, her fingertips digging into his shoulders. She felt her nails bite against his skin, and she was momentarily afraid that she’d hurt him, but he snarled a sound into the curve of her neck and bucked into her even harder.
Not that she could have clung less tightly to him if she’d tried. Everything inside her was one big ache, one that she knew could only be soothed by him.
The heat in her was concentrating now, gathering tight in her belly in a sensation that she was beginning to recognize, that she knew she would only ever associate with this man.
“Oh,” she murmured in between the sloppy kisses that she pressed wherever she could reach—his cheekbone, his temple, the scars covering his bad ear. “Oh, Hector, I’m nearly?—"
She was speaking into his bad side; he wouldn’t be able to hear her, but the messages of her body were clear enough, loud enough.
“Yes, Clio,” he said, grabbing a handful of her hair and pulling her back to look at him. “Show me. Please. Clio.”
Clio felt a burst of satisfaction that she’d finally reduced him to panting the way he did to her—but it was eclipsed by the surge of sensation as her climax overtook her.
“Ah, fuck,” Hector growled, his shocking language urging another clench of pleasure from Clio. “God, Clio, you’re—God—so bloody gorgeous. I’m?—"
And then his motions lost their pattern, grew frantic, erratic as he, too, shook with his crisis. His face twisted, as though the pleasure of it might actually be killing him, and Clio’s heart raced. She’d done that to him. She’d made him into this beautiful creature. And hewasbeautiful, not despite his scars and his coarse manners, but because of them.
Because he was Hector.
And for now … At least for now, he was all hers.
They both stilled gradually, their bodies slowing in unison. Hector pressed one soft, careful kiss to her mouth, then rolled off her before he could crush her.
She missed the weight of him at once.
For a moment, the cool air that rushed in left Clio feeling anxious. Was she meant to … leave? Should she return to her bedchamber?
But then Hector reached out an arm, rounded with muscles, and pulled the edge of the blanket atop them, adjusting her so that she was tucked against his side.
“Bide for a while, princess?” he asked, an unusual vulnerability in his tone.
Clio snuggled in closer. She didn’t even object to that ridiculous pet name.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m perfectly happy right where I am.”
CHAPTER 25
The ground was hard beneath the blanket he’d haphazardly thrown on the ground, and Hector knew that his leg wouldn’t thank him tomorrow.
He didn’t care. He wouldn’t have moved for anything in the world. Not when Clio was snug against him, all soft curves and satin skin. Not when she was aimlessly tracing a pattern on his arm, where it was wrapped around her.
Taking her to bed—or, well, floor; he really was probably going to hell for that—had been the most perfect thing he’d ever experienced. Even though he knew he should hope that he’d gotten her with child, a foolish part of him hoped for precisely the opposite, if only so that they could keep trying.
He didn’t know how he was supposed to give this up.
“Hector,” Clio ventured, and he struggled not to tense. “Can I say something?”
“Of course,” he managed, throat thick with anxiety.
Horror went through him. This was where she told him that he actuallyhadhurt her—and if she said that, he was going to throw himself into the goddamned Thames. Or, this was where she said that she wouldn’t be doing that with him again, heir or no heir. Or?—
“This is the ugliest ceiling I’ve ever seen in my entire life.”
He blinked.
“What?”
